Today’s consumers respond differently to email. They prefer to first read them on their smartphones and then perform follow-up activities, like purchases, on their tablet or laptop. And they expect emails to be visually attractive and easy to read on each device.Read More

While 87% of small businesses have a website (Forrester), many of these
businesses are being let down by inadequate tools. In response, online
software startup BigTurns has a platform, a web-based
application that completely replaces traditional web hosting with a
fresh, business- oriented approach. BigTurns is the world’s first
web hosting platform that automatically tracks and profiles visitors on
your website, creating a complete picture of customer behavior. This
empowers business owners to know their customers more intimately, make
better business decisions and ultimately improve profits.

Last year over 10 million US small businesses were prioritizing eCommerce initiatives (Forrester), yet the eCommerce world remains a nightmare of confusion and complexity. It’s that nightmare that BigTurns puts to rest with it's all-in-one software, a web-based application that makes running an online store easy by bringing together all the tools that business owners need to succeed. In contrast to existing solutions, BigTurns completely replaces the traditional website-ecommerce pair with a holistic “online business” approach that puts the spotlight on understanding your customers and getting better results – whilst saving time and money.

At BigTurns, we provide the software for all businesses to easily
create, send, and track their email marketing campaigns. But we don’t
stop there. We have an amazing technical support department to help
you every step of the way, Account Managers to make sure your campaign
begins with a bang and stays successful, and a product that is very
easy to use. As much as you want your business to succeed, we want to
help your business succeed.
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One of the most important things to keep a grip on when you run a business is the overheads. It’s so easy to let the cost of the “basics” mount up
and start effecting your bottom line. We are going to outline how I first launched my office on a total shoestring but through being a bit savvy made
sure that I didn’t compromise on any of the basics.

So in truth this post is half about me being a bit savvy and the half about me having made mistakes that hopefully I can now stop you making.

Here's a wealth of hints, tricks and suggestions on how to increase the effectiveness of your email marketing programs. Before you start, however, it might make sense to get a good picture of where your campaigns are today by conducting an email marketing review. This review should include an analysis of key performance metrics, a look at any recipient feedback or surveys, a review of your website analytics, a comparison against internal and relevant external benchmarks and a review of your creative and content.

Once this is complete, you can use what you’ve learned to map out an improvement plan for your email marketing programs using the information in the guide. The steps for an Email Marketing Review are listed below.

Relevance is the right content sent to the right audience, which results in high response rates, delivery rates and reader engagement. Advances in email list management software and customers’ increasing willingness to provide specific information about their preferences mean that email marketers can now use sophisticated segmentation in email campaigns to tailor messaging to be more relevant than ever.

Now, marketers can provide different messages to many different segments of their database, using all sorts of factors that affect buying behavior. This procedure, called segmenting, allows you to create a series of highly-focused mailing lists without having to re-enter the data every time or require subscribers to sign up for many different mailing lists in order to get the email they really want. Read More

How do you interpret your results? What metrics are available and which are the best metrics to determine success? The
following is a list of the basics, their priority, how to read them and how to use them to refine content:

Open Rate

This metric indicates how often a recipient opened your email. Since so many emails go ignored, it’s good to know how many got subscribers› attention. However, don’t be misled into believing that every opened email was actually read and digested – in some cases, email is scanned and dumped, opened by mistake or only opened to find the unsubscribe link. Open rate is not the best indicator of email success; however, it can be a great pre-response indicator and also a great way to get results on content or subject line testing.

Click-Through Rate

This is a metric that lets you know how often a recipient clicked on a specific link in your email to either go to your website or to take another action. Again, it’s a pre-response indicator, but it can let you know what content and actions in your email are the most attractive to the reader and give you a good idea of what part of the email was of most interest. Be sure and look at each link separately to determine the winners. Also look at the comparison of click-through to conversion or response. Did people click on your email links (showing interest) and lose it when they got to the response area? This could be an indication that your response form either asks for too much information, the offer doesn’t pay off as promised in your email or that somehow you lost the reader’s interest.

Conversion or Response Rate

This is absolutely the most important metric. All email has a call-to-action, and this metric answers the question, “Did recipients convert to the action you wanted them to take?” Did they sign up for a subscription? Make a purchase? For most email marketers, the question about whether or not someone bought is the most important metric of all.

Unsubscribes and Spam Complaints

The unsubscribe metric is becoming less important over time. Since consumers are getting so overwhelmed with email, many don’t even take the time to unsubscribe or report email as spam. So in most cases, you’ll find that those people not interested will simply delete your email without reading it. But watch this metric for spikes that could indicate that your content is off base. And any spikes in spam complaints can adversely affect your deliverability so it’s important that you pay attention and take action to avoid this.